We all know how much I love peanut butter, so I was esthatic when I receive 4 jars of the best stuff on earth. 🙂

I started out with the creamy versions of each of the peanut butters because I knew that I would like the crunchy better – and I was right! But, only because I prefer chunky over smooth nut butters anyday. I like a little crunch.

Both brands taste the same. And, they are in fact the same recipe that are distributed as different brands in different parts of the country. They are natural peanut butters, so they do seperate and have quite a bit of oil on top. But, just stir it up and you are good to go.

The ingredient list for all 4 jars was amazing – Ingredients: Peanuts – You cannot get any better than that!

I ate the peanut butter as I normally would.

Stuffed into dates:

Mixed into smoothies:

And, then I also enjoyed the peanut butter in the best way possible…in cookies!!

These are SuperChargeMecookies from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Vegan or not, it is a wonderful recipe! One in which you can change up the ingredients that are in there. I have added almond butter and cashew butter in the past, but this time I added peanut butter and they came out fabulous!

Such a super peanut buttery taste – yum!

Simple ingredients make simple, easy and delicious foods. They are the perfect treat for our Fourth of July celebration!

I started my day with a 5 mile treadmill run at the hotel gym (which consisted of 1 treadmill, 1 stationary bike and 1 elliptical). Luckily, no one else was there! It always feels great to sweat after a night of drinking.

We were headed to a post-wedding brunch, but I was starving, so I re-fueled with a post-run recovery drink (8 oz Chocolate Almond Milk, 1 packet Chocolate Amazing Meal, ice cubes). It was delicious! This is my go-to recovery drink while on the go. The Amazing Meal tastes great, especially mixed with almond milk, but it tastes best when ice cold. I also had a packet of plain instant oatmeal with flaxseeds and a banana.

A few hours later, we hit up the brunch where they had a wonderful spread of food. I ate some scrambled eggs, a slice of zucchini bread, spinach and fruit salad.

Brunch totally screws up my eating! I snacked all afternoon…yogurt, pita bread, hummus, dried fruit and a supercharge me cookie. I didn’t eat a lot of all of this stuff, but it still feels like a lot because I’m snacking all day instead of eating 3 meals. Oh well. Life is too short to worry about it! 🙂

This afternoon, we hit up the South End Open Market (SOWA), where we picked up some local greens, hummus and pita bread. They all made an appearance for dinner this evening.

Mixed greens and Pea shoots!

Tabbouleh and Whole wheat pitas.

Then, I whipped up some cookies, granola and nut butter for gifts. Homemade gifts are the best (well, I think so at least). They come from the heart and are made with love!

We stuck it out in New Hampshire for the superbowl! We spent the morning snowshoeing and spent the afternoon preparing our feast! 🙂

The superbowl is always fun because of the company and the food – yum! It wasn’t the healthiest day on record, and I probably won’t feel well tomorrow, but sometimes you just need to splurge and get it out of your system!

Before the night started, I did my favorite Power Yoga video. This one is a killer! You are basically in a plank the entire 60 minutes! The first time I did it, I felt so weak. But, today I felt much stronger due to all of my weight lifting.

Then, we started the night with a game of Beatles Monopoly and nachos!

While we were watching the superbowl and setting up for our “make your own pizza” bar, I had a beer – Circus Boy by Magic Hat. I loved this one! It is an unfiltered wheat beer, which are my favorite, especially with an orange one to make it girlier!

While the pizza cooked, some snacked on homemade chicken wings! (I skipped this course) 🙂

Instead, I waited for some salad and BBQ chicken pizza.

As you can see from the past few days, I have added cheese back into my diet in full force! I stopped eating it for a few weeks to see how my stomach reacted, but I’ve missed it (and my greek yogurt!), so i’m adding it back in to see how it goes…

1/2 cup soaking water from the chipotle peppers – omitted, and added a little water instead

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons nama shoyu

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon cumin

pinch black pepper

pinch cayenne

Directions:

Cut the eggplant in half, then slice thinly to make ‘bacon’ strips.

Sprinkle it with the sea salt and allow to sit for 1-2 hours on paper towels.

In the mean time, blend all of the other ingredients in your high speed blender or food processor.

Press our the extra moisture in your eggplant by blotting it with extra paper towels.

Then, submerge the eggplant in the marinade and let sit 30-45 minutes.

Carefully lay out the eggplant strips onto your dehydrator and dehydrate at 115°F until crispy (mine took about 14 hours – I put it on before I went to bed, and it was done mid-morning).

13.5 hours later, my eggplant bacon was crispy and done!

It tasted great! Definitely not like real bacon, although I probably haven’t had that in at least 10 years! It was crispy and the flavor was great, so I’m glad I used the marinade!

To make our BLT’s for dinner, I took 2 slices of sprouted grain bread and toasted them, then spread a thin layer of mustard on each.

I layered the toast with green leaf lettuce, yellow tomatoes and eggplant bacon.

After the sandwich was put together, I put it on our grill pan to press it a little bit.

Yummy! The eggplant bacon was crispy enough that it really did remind me of real bacon, besides the flavor. But, then again, I used to eat BLT’s because I liked the crunch, so this works just fine for me!

Yesterday morning, I took my zucchini chips out of the dehydrator after 9.5 hours! Here is how they turned out:

They were crispy, just like chips! I liked the flavor better dipped in ketchup, so next time I will use some kind of seasoning before dehydrating. I’m thinking even italian seasoning would be delicious!

Tough workout tonight, my legs were burning during those squat jumps and burpees! I’m sure I’ll be sore tomorrow, but it was worth it!

Then, it was time for dinner and baking!

Tonight on the menu was our favorite – quinoa! You probably think that we eat quinoa all the time. Well, we do! It is a delicious grain (actually, it’s a seed) and it pairs nicely with any type of vegetable. Quinoa is about 15% protein, which is very high for a grain, so we rarely eat much other protein with it.

We used a recipe out of one of the Moosewood Cookbooks tonight. These cookbooks are great, especially for vegetarians. They make all sorts of delicious recipes.

Quinoa cooks like a couscous does, very quickly. I started dinner by rinsing 3/4 cup of quinoa (it is important to rinse the quinoa because the seed produces a natural coat to protect itself from insects and you want to rinse this bitter coat off) and placing it in a pan with twice as much water to boil. Once it boils, you just reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until all water is absorbed. A few minutes before the quinoa was cooked, I added some corn to the mix.

Add the onions and garlic to a pan heated with olive oil and cook until tender. Then, add the pepper, zucchini and squash and cook until a little browned, 5-10 minutes.

Add the tomatoes along with 2 cans of diced tomatoes and a tablespoon of thyme and cover, simmering until the veggies are all tender. Then add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste. We like our food a little on the spicy side, so I added extra pepper flakes!

Serve the stew over a scoop of the quinoa mixture! The quinoa really works nicely with the stew. It is a much lighter dish that it would be with a rice. Delicious!

Rinse the quinoa and add to pan with water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes until tender and fluffy.

When quinoa has cooked for about 10 minutes, stir in the corn, and continue to cook.

Meanwhile, saute the onions and garlic in olive oil over medium heat, until the onions soften.

Add the pepper, zucchini and squash; cook until slightly browned, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the tomatoes and thyme. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, until veggies are tender.

Add red pepper flakes, then salt and pepper to taste.

Fluff the quinoa mixture, spoon it onto individual serving plates and ladle on the vegetable stew.

Nutrition Facts: About 300 calories per serving. 9.2 grams of protein and 6.5 grams of fat.

My dessert creation of the night were some delicious Almond Coconut Macaroons and Chocolate Almond Coconut Macaroons! We are having some friends over for dinner this week, so I needed to try some things out. I can’t serve just any old thing to my guests. 🙂

I got this recipe from another foodie’s blog and they came out perfectly. Plenty of almond and coconut flavor. I added extra sun-grained chocolate chips to the chocolate ones which makes them much more chocolaty and sinful!

I buy my raw almonds and raw coconut whole because you get more bang for your buck, so my first task was to chop them all up. I ground up the almonds in my food processor until they were almost to a flour-like texture. I did the same with the coconut, but made sure it had more texture.

Once chopped, I mixed all of my ingredients together and formed them into ice-cream scoop sized balls. These are supposed to be placed in a dehydrator, but mine isn’t large enough, so instead I turned my oven on to 170°F (the lowest it will go) and “cooked” them for about 4 hours.